The History of our Public Schools
Wyandotte County, Kansas

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In attempting to provide you with an overview (via Internet maps and images of other maps) of the locations of the various buildings based the school's listed address, it is extremely important for you to remember that this process can be confusing due to the fact that what is an address in 2003, may have actually been a different physical location in 1885 or even 1922.  Street names have changed with city mergers and city limit boundaries have changed over the years.  To research the actual location of a closed school, it is important that you use former maps (i.e., the Sanborn Insurance Maps) as opposed to simply looking at a current map.

A good example of how the street names changed is the 1889 street map that shows John J. Ingalls School.  8th Street had become 5th street after the 1886 consolidation.  6th Street was formerly 9th Street, etc.

7th Street was formerly Colorado Avenue
42nd Street at Kansas Avenue and Speaker Road was formerly Carlisle Road
55th Street in Turner was formerly Key Road
Elmwood in Argentine - no longer exists - one block south of Ruby Ave.
Freeman Avenue was Wawas Street
Gibbs Road in Turner was Hester Road
Haskell and Waverly switched names after 1950
Orville was formerly Summundowat Street
State Avenue was Kansas in 1885
Valley Street in Argentine was Ash Street
Wyandotte Avenue was a street between 7th and 8th Streets

1889 - in the "old" Turner area
(which was directly next to parts of Argentine and Armourdale)
Silver Avenue is now Swartz Road
Smelter Avenue is now Miami
Cable Avenue is now Osage
Turner Avenue is now 55th
Central Avenue is now 56th
Ore Avenue is now 57th

Mergers Caused Street Names to be Changed

1886 - Cities of Wyandot, Armstrong, Armourdale, and Kansas City became Kansas City, Kansas

"Mergers had many inherent complications and immediate needs for corrective governmental action.  This merger forced solutions to problems including the merger of geographic areas with established street systems.  They had historically developed independently with different street names and in some cases duplicate names.  Numbered streets did not match at the borders of the old cities.  As a particular example, the streets going from Wyandott(e) to Armourdale did not even come close to matching up.  For instance, if you traveled down 7th Street, when reaching Armourdale, you were on 12th Street, Going down 9th Street, nw 10th Street in Wyandotte, you were on 20th Street in Armourdale.

For the next three years the sections of the city were referred to as the "East Side," the "North Side," and the "South Side," to keep addresses and such straight."  The Streets and Avenues of Kansas City, Kansas by Donald K. Jones, The Historical Journal of Wyandotte County, Vol 1, No 1, Fall 2000

1910 - Argentine annexed into Kansas City, Kansas

With the 1910 Argentine annexation 1316 Ruby Ave became 3813 Ruby Ave and 220 Ash became 1616 South Valley

1922 - Rosedale annexed into Kansas City, Kansas

1967 - Washington District #202 became part of Unified School District 500 (USD 500)

We hope this image overview will aid you in your research.  The links below are current street maps, unless otherwise indicated.

Carnegie Library - 1907 Street Map
Carnegie Library - 1908 Street Map

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Contact the History Webmaster - Patricia Adams

History Site created on December 02, 2002
Page last updated: 14-May-2008